The Blue Devil of the Black Forest
by Angelique Sauvegarde
Summary: What if Kurt Wagner was raised as the Baron's son, according to his father's instruction? One shot.


**The Blue Devil of the Black Forest**

Nicole looked about at her friends' excited faces with apprehension. Granted, this was no different than how she liked to spend time with her friends at home. What was camping without ghost stories around the campfire? And what point was there in visiting creepy places like maybe the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where her parents took her and her cousin last summer, if the stories didn't revolve around equally creepy local legends?

Still, the story about this part of the Black Forest took place a little too recently for her comfort. And when Lars, his eyes shining in the flickering firelight said, "Every word of this is true, I swear," she was almost inclined to believe it.

"The castle wasn't always abandoned. Twenty two years ago, it was a thriving estate," he continued, "ruled by the Baron Wagner and his beautiful wife, who was eagerly awaiting the birth of her first child. But despite the happy appearance this perfect couple maintained, everyone suspected that the Baroness had been unfaithful. Even the Baron was suspicious that the child was not his, but out of his own blind infatuation for his wife, he kept his thoughts to himself and simply looked forward to fatherhood."

"Wait a minute," said Nicole. "This sounds familiar. Let me guess. When the baby was born, he grew wings and flew out the chimney to begin a career of mayhem?"

"Mayhem," said Annemarie, Lars' girlfriend, "and murder. But no, the baby did not grow wings."

"And," said Lars, "You can't explain any of this away by saying it was all the doing of mutant sandhill cranes, the way you ruined the Jersey Devil story. But yes, the night the baby was born was an occasion of terror. The Baron was not allowed to attend the birth, and may have been grateful afterward for that."

"What happened?" said Nicole mostly to fill what she expected was only a dramatic pause. Lars had always had an overactive imagination coupled with a taste for the morbid.

"There are few who will talk about this," said Lars, "but it was said that the Baron heard not just the cries of his wife or of the newborn child, but screams from the doctor and one of the Baroness' maids. The maid screamed in particular that the Baroness was a demon, and the baby was the child of Satan. Those were, of course, the last words of anyone who witnessed the birth, for when the Baron stormed in, all he found were the dead bodies of the doctor and the maid, and a grossly deformed baby boy with blue skin, lying in a pool of blood. The Baroness had disappeared and was never seen again.

"Everything changed at the castle from that night on. With the loss of his wife, the Baron decided once and for all that he would raise the baby as his own son. But he feared how servants, guests, anyone at the castle would react to the child's ever more alarming appearance."

"What did he look like, I mean, besides blue and no wings?" said Nicole, hoping that it was so grotesque, she'd know it was all a tall tale and write off her budding fear as the silliness of a tired imagination more than a little susceptible to her cousin's nefarious influence.

"Indigo hair on his head, pointed ears, three fingers on each hand, feet shaped like those of a bird, a long, pointed tail," said Annemarie, "and those few who've seen his teeth and lived to tell say he has a deceptively charming smile, with sharp, elongated fangs."

"Okay," said Nicole, now more certain that this, what sounded now like a blue combination of the Jersey Devil and Dracula, was indeed nothing more than a tall tale.

"Anyway," said Lars, "All the staff at the castle was compelled to sign a gag order banning them from speaking of anything they'd see or hear at the castle. Anyone who refused was immediately dismissed. And as Kurt, as the Baron named him-"

"Wait, you expect me to believe Kurt Wagner is this-?"

"Do you want me to tell this story?" Lars asked, pointedly. "Anyway, as Kurt got older, he was never allowed outside by day and even most nights. He wasn't really allowed even outside his room much, and the orders were to keep his windows shuttered at all times. But the Baron did see to the boy's education. He taught him to read and write, and hired a tutor recommended by an old friend of his. She was, among other things, blind. The Baron would not hire any seeing person to work directly with the boy. But she was kind to him. Never judged him for his appearance anyway, and encouraged in him a deep love for learning, literature, and unfortunately for a great many people, adventure. She particularly encouraged him to read to her books like The Secret Garden, The Count of Monte Cristo, and the Phantom of the Opera. What was her name? Genevieve? Virginia?"

"Close enough," said Annemarie.

"Anyway, by all appearances, she taught him well, but unfortunately his religious education never got far past Genesis 1:26."

"'Then God said,'" Annemarie quoted "'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'"

Nicole wondered how they came to know so much about this unfortunate boy's upbringing if no one was really allowed to talk about what they saw or heard in that castle, which, she noted as they'd passed it, looked like it had been abandoned a lot longer ago than the story seemed to suggest. Of course, she never realized just how quickly nature could take back its own, but it all seemed irrelevant. The story, as far-fetched as it seemed was actually beginning to fetch her interest, so she said nothing as Lars continued.

"Kurt would hear no explanation about what the image and likeness of God really meant. He knew how he did not look like any other man, and that his appearance was a source of shame and a cause of fear among the household. Why else would the man who raised and loved him as his own son, who'd shown him nothing but undeserved and unquestioned kindness keep him shut up in his room after it became clear that no amount of surgery, chemical treatments, and such would make him look like everyone else? Why would he only take him outside by cloudy, moonless nights to show him around the estate and say things like, 'When we get you looking more human, I'll happily show you your inheritance by day'? Why did he feel such a pressing need to protect his son from the fearful stares and the shocked whispers Kurt knew were directed toward and about him? He was apparently made in the image and likeness of the Devil himself, and if godly young men honored their fathers, he would venture out as he saw fit. Besides, his ears were sharp in more ways than one. He heard the whispers around the castle about his mother- and knew that the Baron was not his real father, anyway.

"Soon after that, rumors began circulating all over the area, in Winzeldorf and some say even in Munich of people, mostly young women, being watched at night from rooftops, shadows, or even up in trees, by a pair of glowing yellow eyes. Some claimed that they could just barely make out the shadow of a demonic looking creature, crouching on all fours, watching. One of the maids claimed she woke one night and found him watching her through her window. Bear in mind, her room was four floors up. She must have startled him, because he ran off, scrambling down the wall like a spider, and running across the courtyard on all fours."

"So that's why you call him the Nightcrawler!" Nicole remarked.

Lars nodded. "Anyway, the maid was dismissed the next day, for an alleged mental illness. Hallucinations, a problem that had begun plaguing many of the servants and caretakers at the castle around then. When the gardener confirmed that he saw large, birdlike footprints and three-fingered handprints, he was dismissed for the same reason. But the Baron knew what was really happening, and he sent the tutor away as well, for contributing to Kurt's increasingly restless and rebellious nature.

"Kurt disappeared that night-"

"The night that trapeze artist died!" added Annemarie.

"And," added Lars, "if you doubt the truth of any of this, you can look her up in the library if you like."

"Yes, I know, Jimaine Szardos," said Nicole, "But I thought she fell while performing without a net. I remember it being remarkable how she fell all that way, got up and walked out, then collapsed and died of her injuries just outside the big top."

"That's just what the news reported," said Annemarie. "She did fall, but she never hit the ground. Some of the audience said that while she was still in midair, she disappeared in a puff of smoke. Carnival workers heard her screams and followed them all the way out- into the forest. They found her body, her neck broken. Confirming the rumor that this was really the first of the Nightcrawler killings was the presence of two large, birdlike footprints in the mud beside the body, and the stench of brimstone."

"But this didn't fit the pattern of the other Nightcrawler attacks," said Nicole.

"No, it didn't," Annemarie replied, "which is why some people think this death was unintentional. It's been rumored that shortly before Kurt Wagner left the castle, he developed an obsession with Jimaine Szardos. Of course, a demonic appearance would not prevent him from experiencing something resembling human needs and emotions. But being too nervous and socially maladjusted to come forward with his feelings, he settled for following her at a distance, always watching her while he hid. When he saw her fall, whether by some demonic power or whatever, he teleported to her rescue.

"Rather than thanking him when she finally laid eyes him, she screamed in terror. And in a panicked attempt to quiet her, he killed her."

"But complicating matters," said Lars, his patience at his story being interrupted beginning to wear just a little thin, "this was around the time her brother Stefan fled from their caravan. Some suspected that he may have had a role in her death, especially when he turned up at a monastery weeks later, thoroughly convinced and petrified that a demon had been stalking his family.

"After that began a wave of attacks and murders, some of which began to fit the pattern you just mentioned. Young women with their eyes scratched or gouged out, and their throats cut, the crime scene reeking of brimstone. But it was among those who survived the attacks that the pattern was more apparent."

"The blind women," gulped Nicole, fidgeting with the earpiece of her own heavy glasses.

"No, not necessarily blind," said Annemarie, with a wicked grin. "Not all of them, anyway. He seemed to have different plans for those, however… not that I'm trying to scare you or anything, but…"

"Nicole is not easily scared, are you?" said Lars.

Nicole shook her mousy brown head, hoping that in the failing light, nobody would see that she was not so sure. "Don't stop on account of me. I want to hear the rest of this."

"All right," said Lars. "Around the time that the crime wave hit its peak, news finally came from the castle. The Baron had died. No cause was given, and no funeral was held. Most suspected that the old _bon viveur_ finally had a heart attack, and that Kurt was, as usual, too sickly or too painfully shy to receive any visitors. But Kurt did inherit the Baron's title and estate, and then very quickly, as the news reported, took an extended trip abroad to visit some old friend of the family. Nothing so unusual about that, except that all those attacks stopped altogether when he left.

"When he returned, the son of the Baron who was always too sick or too reclusive to ever show his face in public seemed a completely different person. He was flush with some newly acquired wealth, almost happy and confident. He had learned some means to hide his deformities. Rumor has it that it had something to do with the sudden interest he expressed in the occult and the séances and other, as rumor has it, more sinister ongoings that began at the castle. Regardless, life there began to resemble something like what it had been before he was born, and he even began to engage in a social life more typical of a young aristocrat."

"I know," said Nicole. "I saw the tabloids back home, too. The young Baron, Germany's most reclusive and now most eligible bachelor finally got himself a girlfriend, Brigitte Neuenschwander, right? A literature student from Ludwig Maximilians University."

"A very nearsighted literature student, rather like someone else we know," said Annemarie. "Do you want to know what became of her?"

"While hosting what he'd hoped would be their engagement party, he took her through a walk through these very woods," said Annemarie, "then suddenly returned to the castle, carrying her. He insisted that the Nightcrawler attacked them. He refused all medical treatment. She's been hospitalized ever since."

"Her injuries were that bad?"

"Not physically, no," said Lars. "But when she woke up, all she would say was that Baron Wagner was the Nightcrawler."

"Well, if all we have is the word of some poor catatonic…"

"And that's what most people say," said Annemarie, again grinning wickedly, "but those of us who live here know something else. Since then, the young Baron has never shown his face in public again. The castle was abandoned. But there have been sightings again of the yellow, glowing eyes, or the demonic form crouching in the shadows, on moonless nights like this. Yes, the Nightcrawler stalks among these woods again, Nicole. He may even be watching you right now."


End file.
